2024 Volume 45 Issue 2 Pages 155-158
Super-absorbent polymer (SAP) beads are small, ranging from a few millimeters to more than 10 millimeters in diameter, but they expand as much as 10 times after exposing to fluid.
We report the case of 5-year-old girl with SAP bead as a foreign body in her right ear. Her chief complaint was right ear pain. She was referred to out department from otolaryngology clinic under the tentative diagnosis of refractory acute otitis media. The right external auditory canal was filled with granulation and brown hard material. We obtained the careful history about small toys from her mother and suspected SAP beads which was probably inserted about 4 months ago. The foreign body was removed under general anesthesia one week after the first visit. Tympanic membrane was highly compressed toward the promontory and was accompanied with a perforation in the posterior inferior quadrant.
Tympanoplasty was planned one year after the first surgery for the purpose of closing the perforation of tympanic membrane and improving her hearing as 20.0 dB with 10 dB air-bone gap. During the second surgery, the ossicles was united by scarring and part of them was not observed. Postoperatively her hearing recovered as much as the opposite side.
SAP beads should be informed to be the risk of causing tympanic membrane perforation and ossicular defects when they are left to be in the external auditory canal for months.
